Jersey Shore fishing: Late bite on bluefins

The early bird didn't get the worm today. At least that was the case in the bluefin tuna fleet Joe Reap took his Reaper from Manasquan offshore at 4 a.m., and we did get lucky once in the morning when I was trolling the big Boston Whaler east from the Reasor area. Bob Correll of Bay Head had rigged a naked balao, and that's what the 31-inch bluefin hit. Correll and Capt. Joe Massa of My Three Sons at Morgan Marina debated whether to keep it rather than waiting for a bigger schoolie -- but decided to do so. That looked like a good decision for hours as hardly anything was being caught in the offshore fleet. Some blamed the full moon, but others noted that the "bite" had been about 3:30 p.m. each of the last two days. We only added one small dolphin, and it looked pretty dead until we started marking fish near the surface around 3 -- and we stayed a little later when they suddenly turned on briefly. With our "under" already aboard, we had to release three 35-inchers and lost another that hit both spreader bars and balao before heading home after Reap called in the fleet. Each time we reeled in tuna in the afternoon we spotted cownose rays under the boat. Massa also caught the first large little tunny I've heard of this year. The water color was good, but there were no mammals, virtually no birds, and only three sea tutles were spotted. Until the end there was hardly any bait marked. The tuna we kept had a stomach full of very small sand eels.

Capt. Russ Binns was out there with his Mar-Lin from Toms River, and had no luck with the tuna. However, Mike Koblan of Wall reports they trolled a 22-poiund dolphin on the way offshore, and later picked five smaller dolphin off the pots in the Glory Hole.

A very surprising report came from the Golden Eagle out of Belmar as they got into 8-to-10-pound blues on both bait and jigs. Blues of that size have been unheard of in the Shore party boat fleet since the spring. The Queen Mary from Point Pleasant stuck with the pee-wee blues today, when a bonito won the pool.

Bobby Matthews, at Fisherman's Den in Belmar Marina, was excited about weighing in two doormat fluke. John Forrester of Mercerville had a 12 1/4-pounder Friday, and Alex Drago from Ocean Township boated a 12-pounder today. Both were caught off Long Branch. John Foster from Jackson weighed a 15-pound dolphin.